Pensive
by foolondahill17
Summary: Or, seven times Severus Snape wanted and could not have Lily Evans. "The glass was a cruel barrier. More than once he found his mind flitting – feverishly, uncontrollably – to the idea of shattering it, of setting her free and into his arms." The best of Severus Snape was his biggest regret.


This was originally posted in 2013 as a collection of drabbles looking into Snape's mind. I've recently tidied it up a bit and formed a more complete one-shot. I hope you enjoy.

* * *

Pensive

* * *

Lily's fingers were wrapped around Severus's thin, bony wrist. Her palm was warm, slightly sweaty. He could feel the heavy shroud of her nearness poignantly. Her shoulder shivered against his own. The boat bobbed gently in the choppy waters of the Black Lake.

"Oh, Sev," she hissed quietly, tentatively, voice quivering, as though afraid she might shatter this fragile, delicate moment in time – this miracle that stood before them and struck the other first-years dumb with awe. "That's it, Sev! It's Hogwarts."

The castle turrets and towers rose out of the darkness, looming over the fleet of first-year boats like the kind of hazy, half-formed dream that could only be reached in the deepest regress of sleep.

Severus's lips spasm into a smile. Heat was pulsing up his arm from Lily's trembling fingertips.

"Almost there," he whispered back across the heavy air and darkness, not sure if she could hear him. He was glad for the black of night, glad for the darkness that hid his face.

Lily giggled rather absurdly, but somehow Severus didn't mind. "Oh, it's beautiful. I hadn't any idea it would be so big!" Her eyes gleamed in the pinpricks of light that came from the distant castle windows. Her teeth flashed in the darkness as she beamed. Her curtain of red hair simmered like coals in the half-light. He felt her palm against the skin of his arm, warmed by the blood pulsing through her flesh and agreed.

It was, indeed, beautiful.

* * *

There she was.

Sitting at the Gryffindor table.

With him.

With _him_.

He was sitting _right next to her_.

Their shoulders were touching. Potter's head was bowed so low that his shaggy, overgrown hair almost brushed against her breast.

Students shoved past Severus' bony shoulders as they passed him in the entrance hall, grumbling about him blocking the way. He couldn't seem to move. His feet, for all the genius and design of feet, had simply refused to act as feet any longer.

Severus watched her, watched her hands holding her fork and knife as she cut into her eggs, watched her mouth as it chewed her breakfast, lips gleaming with grease in the light of the Great Hall's ceiling – gasping blue sky, not a cloud to be seen – watched her foot tapping on the cobblestone floor, watched her pulsing sheet of red hair leap over her shoulder as she turned her head and saw Severus standing in the doorway.

Her eyes lighted on his own, grew wide with welcome or maybe relief. She smiled, two front teeth breaking through the gap in her lips. She said something to Potter without looking at him and got up from the table, breakfast unfinished.

"Merlin, Potter is such an idiot," she said, voice undecided between delight and annoyance. "Come on, Sev. Let's go."

* * *

He heard their voices from the next corridor over, boisterous, vulgar voices, hardly caring to make themselves inconspicuous. Black with his careless grace, Potter with his arrogance, Pettigrew with his shrill devotion, and Lupin with his croaking voice much too hoarse to belong to a young boy. They were scheming about Evans – they called her _Evans_! – about how they could possibly get her to go to Hogsmeade with Potter.

"Trick her?"

"Already tried that one, Peter."

"Pollyjuice?

"Extortion?"

"Blackmail?"

"I suppose simply being _kind_ to her hasn't crossed your mind?"

Severus's wand was in his hand, craning his neck around the stone archway, leveling his hand carefully for a perfect shot at Potter's disheveled head –

"Besides," Lupin continued, voice casually naïve. "Isn't Lily Snape's girl?"

Something strange happened inside Severus's chest. All at once anger and joy blossomed in half-measures within him, tugging apart his gut in the powerful pull of conflicting emotions. Potter and his gang swept down the hallway, uproarious laughter clanging within Severus's skull, Lupin looking sheepish but smiling within their midst.

"Just something I've heard people talking about," he shrugged his thin, ragged shoulders.

Severus's heart was thumping in his stomach. The rage was ebbing away now, leaving him with a glorious, blooming sense of delight that twisted among his intestines and almost physically hurt. He returned his wand to its hidden holster in his sleeve and raced off to go find Lily, where she'd ask him what he was smiling so about.

* * *

He used to avoid saying her name, _Lily_. Her name like poetry, perfectly molded syllables undulating through the air on everyone's lips but his. It had been too large and beautiful to get up his throat and out of his mouth without fear of mistake, afraid he might pronounce it wrong, might not form the sounds correctly with his clumsy tongue, _Lily_.

He left his conversations to her open-ended, her name tagged on the end like an echo, unheard, unseen accept for within his head where he savored the sound of it and the light flecks of gold hiding in her green irises. "How was Transfiguration?" _Lily_ "Did you get much homework in Charms?" _Lily_ "What are you doing for Christmas?" _Lily_ "Would you go to Hogsmeade with me?" _Lily_.

Her name was scrawled onto a rock next to Potter's, all white marble and spelled in solid, sturdy, unmovable letters, _Lily_. Lily Potter – and it was impossible to say her name. Potter and – _she's_ dead. _She's_ gone. _She_ married Potter. He'd killed – _her_.

Lily.

He'd killed _Lily_.

He wished now as a boy he had not found her name so taboo. He wished he could remember how the currents and gently flowing waves of the consonants and vowels felt like coming off his own tongue. He wished he could remember the sound of _Lily Evans_ in his own voice rather than _Lily Potter_ whispered by so many others, rather than being left now with only the ghosting memory of all that had been unsaid that haunted him, dogged his footsteps, reverberated against the walls of his skull and gave him no moment of peace.

Lily.

 _Lily_.

I loved you, _Lily_.

* * *

Severus hated Sirius Black.

He hadn't known – even as one of the Dark Lord's favorites – that Black had been the traitor. That knowledge was reserved for the Dark Lord only. The other Death Eater knew there was a traitor, of course, a double agent living in the shadows of Dumbledore's Order. There was guess-work and speculation, but no name was ever identified for certain.

 _School boy grudge_ , said Lupin – the filthy, foolish werewolf. _School boy grudge_. The phrase made Severus want to throw back his head and laugh. Black had proven himself capable of murder at sixteen and Severus should have _known_.

Severus felt a wild, alien glee as he conjured the stretcher and stalked up the hillside, Black and the foolish Potter boy in toe. Potter, such a gullible boy, believing Black's _lies_ about Pettigrew.

Perhaps Severus would come to watch. The Dementor's kiss, witnesses had only ever spoken of its horror. It was certain to be, Severus was sure, a scene unlike many others. Gruesome, perhaps, but holding a triumph Severus had only ever imagined in feverish dreams – those where _she_ would come to him, face shaded in darkness and fingers too cold and transparent to hold in his own.

"I should kill you." Severus' voice was carefully emotionless, stagnant and still. The wand he screwed into Pettigrew's cheek was quite steady.

Severus had almost envied Pettigrew, fifteen years-ago when the useless, clumsy boy had staggered across that shabby Muggle street to confront Black. Severus had wished it had been him, him to face Black with a wand, to blast apart the street and see Black's bloody corpse torn apart on the pavement. He would have made him suffer, scream as Lily had screamed –

Pettigrew's eyes were terrified and flighty like a rodent stuck in a corner, tip of Severus' wand smoking, searing a small red circle on Pettigrew's cheek like a cigarette burn. The room was hot and smoking, colored red as Pettigrew's face was flushed blotchy, ugly red, as Lily's hair had been red, and the death that Severus yearned to speak through his wand and into Pettigrew's puny brain was red and burning.

Severus, after all, had more practice in death than Pettigrew did.

Pettigrew was alone and cowering, sniveling and creeping as only a dirty rodent can learn hiding amongst other refuse in the sewer.

"I should kill you," whispered Severus and dropped his wand, leaving a red line across Pettigrew's cheek. He turned his back, robes whipping across Pettigrew's face, and stalked from the room, heels clicking on the cold floor.

* * *

She was smiling, just as he remembered. Lips full and rosy, teeth white, evenly spaced, smattering of freckles across her nose beneath emerald eyes – Severus tried not to look at her eyes but he could feel them, hot and piercing on his face – he wondered if they were not somehow accusatory.

Her hair was burgundy in the half-light of the third-story classroom.

It bid him unceasingly. His dreams were tormented by the thought of it, until his living and dreaming become entwined, her smile and laugh dodging his every waking or sleeping step and thought.

The glass was a cruel barrier. More than once he found his mind flitting – feverishly, uncontrollably – to the idea of shattering it, of setting her free and into his arms.

"So strange that you should both see part of the same thing, Severus," Dumbledore's voice was old and creaking as a rusty gate. In that moment Severus thought he hated him. "Although, perhaps, not so strange after all."

"You speak of the Potter brat?" Severus spat. Did he imagine it? Lily's smile falter slightly at the reference to her son? Could she not belong wholly to him even in his fantasies?

Lily reached out a pale hand and placed it on Severus' reflection's shoulder. For a moment Severus thought he could feel her fingers breathing across his flesh, an echo, a ghost. They were cold.

Dumbledore only chuckled. Severus could see the old man's eyes in the mirror, behind Lily's waist, crystal blue and penetrating.

"I shall give to you the same advice I gave to Harry, Severus," said Albus, voice now soft and sad. Severus tried not to wonder what the headmaster saw in the mirror – a mirror who had driven wiser men then he mad with its impossible desires.

"It does not do to dwell on dreams, lest we forget to live."

But what then, if for him he dare not dwell on life, lest he forget to dream? All he had left was memory, the feel of her small, trusting hand tight on his wrist, but even that, even memory had been tarnished long ago, by things unsaid and could not be undone. Severus turned to glance at the headmaster, trying to peer through the old man's wrinkled face and read some truth hidden in his mind and when Severus turned back to the mirror, Lily's reflection had vanished.

* * *

Fin.


End file.
